


The Cost

by GhostPyre



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Magic, Magic-Users, listen this is literally me posting my shitty online because who cares! i write for me!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23978305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostPyre/pseuds/GhostPyre
Summary: A young magician's strange start to life as being unable to use magic





	The Cost

It was common for magic users to not know their family. Snatched away before you can ever remember anything if you were lucky enough. Jovian wasn't quick that lucky; he remembers that towering woman coming to get him from his farm. The fine furs draped around her shoulders, glimmering opals dotting her wardrobe, and the small rings on her delicate hand. She looked like she had never felt the dirt on her hands, untouched by nature itself. 

But the air around her felt otherworldly. Jovian stared up at her and remember what his father had once said about strangers. Avoid those that seem like they have touched and pulled beyond the veil of this world for no good comes of them. He wondered if she had done that… broke beyond what he had always felt. 

"Are you the one who brought the river back?" She asked, looking down at his frail figure. 

"Can you make beasts from thin air?" he asked. 

The strange woman burst into laughter, "is that what the local midwives tell you? Travelers are made of tricks? How grand your imagination is!" She came closer to him and asked again, her demeanor changing to those of local soldiers, scary, demanding, and power. "Are you the one who brought the river back." 

"I'm a farmer's hand miss, I do whatever I can to help the farm."

"I was told that a local boy brought the dry river back, everyone told me it was a boy from this farm."

"I'm just a farmer's hand, miss…"

"Do you know that magicians, sorcerers, even wizards can tell if a stranger is like us or not?"

"I didn't miss."

"You could tell I can use magic." 

Jovian's face went pale with those words, he realized the strange woman knew his secret. Only his father knew of what he could do, he'd even seen it. Growing saplings in a day's time, apples fruits in the dead of winter, mushrooms glowing to show him the path home, and yes, bringing the river back. He didn't like this woman and her questions. Without thinking he ran back to his small house, leaving the woman behind. She didn't follow him as he hid in his room. He waited for her to leave. 

She never quite left though as he soon discovered. Hours passed as he hid in his room and waited for his father to come home. The creak of the door followed by heavy footsteps and light; he wasn't alone. He stayed hidden his room as mummers began to fill the small farm house. He didn't peek out incase his fears were true: the strange woman came into his house. Why would she want to talk to him? He was just a farmer's hand. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Oh how he desperately wished he was nothing more than a farmer's hand… 

Oh how he wished. 

How many years had it been since the woman came to his farm? He lost count of the seasons that passed, he was barely a child, weaned from his mother too soon and on the farm close behind. That day she came, Carmilla the Hidden Sorceress, was the day he found the world beyond soil and vegetables and cows. His father allowed her to take him, supposedly to train him in the way of magic.

'To better control yourself,' she would always say. 'To stop you from being reckless,' she would say. 'To stop from causing harm,' she would say. 

She has long been gone, Jovian knows. Who knows if she's still alive but he doesn't care unless she comes after him, from the grave or not. For a short time under studying her and other powerful magicians, Jovian saw her as a mother when he never truly had one. It was a very short time…

Jovian remembers the other students, all much younger than him being able to control the magic that they pulled from beyond the veil. How easy it was for them. He fought to control it, to contain magic like how they wanted, carefully and forcefully. He never could get it, they said what he did before he came under the magicians' to study was magic, but when he had to follow their rituals to control magic he failed horrifically each time. Everyone surpassed him while he left behind struggling with the basics. Whatever he would get to work, each time ended badly. Broken arms, crumbled buildings, lost students, each and every time… something went wrong. 

Most of those he grew up with ended up being famous, magical figures found in royal castles and at the forefront of armies. He didn't have that opportunity. Jovian was told that his magic was never going to be ready and it would better to find a way to control it through other means, so that maybe he'd have a chance at mastering the basics. That's where his bindings are from. 

Five bindings to control himself, no, it was more for the protection of others from his magic. 

Strangers would never take note of the five rings on his body. Wrists, ankles, and neck. No, they'd only think they were strange tattoos of a strange traveler. The bindings were painful when he got them, forced upon his body. He could never do magic after that, not like he once could. A useless magician. Scarred with bindings that signaled him as a failure to other magicians, an outcast among society and an outcast among magicians. He only wished the bindings would allow him to continue on with the magic he knew. 

It was the magic you didn't have to pull from beyond the veil and tame, instead you'd let it listen to you and envelope you. Jovian couldn't do either now. He was only good as magician's aid for his knowledge of herbs and bones… that's all he'd ever be. He only wanted to stay a farm hand, making crops flourish and rivers flow. Now Jovian couldn't even be a farm hand, couldn't be a magician, couldn't be anything other than outsider. 

He'd get used to it sooner or later.


End file.
